Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

2012-01-12 04:05:44

JPLAY was built with only one goal in mind: optimal music reproduction. Its stripped-down, bare-bones playback engine fits completely inside CPU cache and can be used as stand-alone player or together with popular music management software:

JPLAY is the first audiophile player providing direct integration with JRiver Media center, foobar2000 and iTunes.

There is a GUI panel included for quick & easy adjustment of most important settings. This now makes JPLAY easier to use than ever and leverages hosts’ GUI with JPLAY’s Award-Winning audio playback technology.

Can someone explain of what the use a player within the foobar2000 player is? It is better because:

Is there any veracity to such claims? Knowing what little I know about computer audio (which is not all that much, despite having put together my own audio server with all the necessary hard and software) I really doubt there is any substance to the assertions. The only benefit I can see is to the developer charging something like 99$.....

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

I'm interested, how a playback engine, which is, by definition, software, can get into CPU cache? OK, if it's small as CPU cache is (but then, which one, and on which CPU's?), but how can you load it directly to CPU cache? Or I misunderstood something?

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Of course I am all to tempted to pull this lousy joke about the lossy compressor they would need when I select an entire TB ...

But this is closing in on a couple of wishlist items of mine. For example, suppose you have a computer which is fanless except the drives. Then you might want a player which foobar2000 to- buffer a few tracks from the playback queue, and then- spin down the drives, and - awake the drives when user is interacting (precisely when you are fiddling around with playlist, you can tolerate that noise)- To push this further, what if your graphics card is noisy? You would want player to simply turn it off in screensaver mode and re-awake it upon keypress.

All this would probably require some memory allocation tricks I am not sure whether you can perform in MS-Windows. I remember I could that on appleware twenty years ago: each application had a minimum free memory requirement, and user could set «take this much if you can» and «do not take more than this».

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

This jitter hype is getting ridiculous. The only thing that annoys me about computer playback is the physical noise. But that is only with my current machine which houses six hard drives and needs to be cooled with a lot of air. Once I pack that into a rack case, move it away, and build a small form factor as my desktop with only an SSD and no add-on GPU, I will have complete quiet. I may even water cool the CPU, chipset, RAM, and power supply, and just build a giant passive cooling tower to get rid of every moving part (except the pump).

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

I'm interested, how a playback engine, which is, by definition, software, can get into CPU cache? OK, if it's small as CPU cache is (but then, which one, and on which CPU's?), but how can you load it directly to CPU cache? Or I misunderstood something?

Intersting point. AFAIK there are no Windows or Linux APIs for CPU cache management. One finds kernal routines for doing gross things like flushing the CPU cache, but in application code? Not so much!

Almost all CPU cache management is handled via natural contention. The most heavily used code tends to sit there for a little while. The strongest thing that one could do is reduce the size of your program's code so that it would easily fit inside the cache so that at least it wouldn't force parts of itself out of cache while it was running. But, not hurting yourself and forcing yourself cache resident are worlds apart.

Most audio players don't need to be cache resident, and they don't use that much CPU when they are running. If this program could do what it claims, it would proably be a really bad idea!

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

well I installed the trial and it didn't work, it runs a service but the program won't recognize mp3 files or music from the network, for me definitely not worth 99 bucks

On their website, when they mention foobar2000 interaction, their playback 'engine' only takes over on lossless files. It hands playback duty back to foobar2000 on mp3. I did not see explanation of why.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

well I installed the trial and it didn't work, it runs a service but the program won't recognize mp3 files or music from the network, for me definitely not worth 99 bucks

On their website, when they mention foobar2000 interaction, their playback 'engine' only takes over on lossless files. It hands playback duty back to foobar2000 on mp3. I did not see explanation of why.

The service completely breaks seeking too, since the input "decoder" has no knowledge of how to decode the said format..All the input component seems to do is decode samples from/to the service. Thats it. The service creates the WASAPI device instance, so it completely breaks FB2K compat.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Most audio players don't need to be cache resident, and they don't use that much CPU when they are running. If this program could do what it claims, it would proably be a really bad idea!

But you can't, AFAIK, get a program to be, as you say, cache-resident. Windows are running zillion little programs, services, subroutines and stuff, and all of them must get to CPU to be executed, so cache is fast fill-erasing. I guess they wanted to say that their software is smaller than cache memory on modern CPUs (anything from 2 to 12 MB, I'm not into cache memories), and they give false impression that they fill the program into CPU cache - instead, they are starting program as windows service and it's running entirely from RAM, which is audiophile good, and not loading decoders and whatsnot from HDD, which is audiophile bad.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

For its size, at 256K, compared to other programs, it does seems a little expensive, say compared to Word or the Windows operating system, but it does produce the cleanest digital playback I’ve yet obtained from a computer even when the program is not in Hibernate mode. Get the trial program for free, see what you think, then go ahead and make the purchase.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Jplay looks like it may be largely vaporware based on spurious claims, meaning it does little or nothing beyond what the "real" player does that it claims to "integrate" with. It could easily be violating the licenses of each of the players it claims to enhance or whatever.

Put another way, it looks like a not-so-clever scam to extract money from people who use iTunes, Foobar2000, or JRiver without delivering anything of real value. I see little difference between this scam and someone trying to resell Foobar2000, iTunes, or JRiver for $130 by distributing each of the developers' files.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Jplay looks like it may be largely vaporware based on spurious claims, meaning it does little or nothing beyond what the "real" player does that it claims to "integrate" with. It could easily be violating the licenses of each of the players it claims to enhance or whatever.

It at the very least violate's FB2K's SDK license for abusing interfaces.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

I also wonder how they gained permission to use Foobar2000's logo/icon for their money-making purposes. Its prominence on the main page shows they know how and are willing to leverage the credibility of others to make themselves money.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

I also wonder how they gained permission to use Foobar2000's logo/icon for their money-making purposes. Its prominence on the main page shows they know how and are willing to leverage the credibility of others to make themselves money.

Our logo (JRiver) was also used without permission. I've asked them to remove it.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Ooops! JimH, I did not mean to exclude you from what I (and no doubt many others) consider to be applications of the highest quiality that seem to be exploited by jplay. Glad to see you defending your IP. It appears the jplay splash page has been changed to remove logos, but replaced with text referencing Foobar2000 and JRiver, so both applications continue to be mocked and exploited.

Perhaps more substantially, there are several significant claims made on the jplay website claiming "integration" with Foobar2000 and JRiver and providing capabilities to overcome claimed deficiencies. To the extent use of any terms or claims are defined in any SDK or licensing terms (I'm not an attorney or software developer), I would find it very hard to believe that jplay would meet a reasonable standard for true integration given what it does and does not.

In thinking about trends, I think computer-based media mangement and playback will only increase, and I would expect others to also exploit the Foobar2000 and JRiver brands to make a fast buck in a manner that will hurt the Foobar2000 and JRiver brands. I hope both Foobar2000 and JRiver have or acquire the ability to claim meaningful control over components or plug-ins to your applications and retain the right to essentially ban crapware tie-ins. Again, I'm no attorney, but I've been involved in enough business disputes in the U.S. that involve IP that under certain conditions IP rights not defended can be lost, and I'd hate to see that happen to Foobar2000 or JRiver. From my experience, I'd look closely at leveraging the concept of "derivative works" in evaluating jplay and similar and your rights. I'm also aware of the risk that if those in your positions give too much attention to marginal operations like jplay you could inadvertently give crapware providers a boost, so a case-by-case decision process seems prudent.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Perhaps more substantially, there are several significant claims made on the jplay website claiming "integration" with Foobar2000 and JRiver and providing capabilities to overcome claimed deficiencies. To the extent use of any terms or claims are defined in any SDK or licensing terms (I'm not an attorney or software developer), I would find it very hard to believe that jplay would meet a reasonable standard for true integration given what it does and does not.

I did research on JPLAY's code (sue me), and indeed, how it does things grossly defies any logic of "integration". Bypassing the audio services of FB2K? Thats a nono.